A quote: “Distrust and caution are the parents of security.” ~~ Benjamin Franklin
I’ll start with a story …
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We almost didn’t make it. We kept believing in a fabric that had worn and frayed beyond repair. But the Great Defeat at Salt Lake almost wiped us out.
It was the first major victory of the emerging Graymen.
I mused on that doom as the November wind plucked at my great coat and I tried to keep Adira in sight. That woman would be the death of us.
Oh, not by ambush. She was as paranoid as five of my most gloomy deputies. But keeping up with her as she scrambled like a flippin’ mountain goat across cliff faces and through the densest forests.
Who knew there was such a thing as a warrior horticulturalist?
Adira practically ran the Archives, but hearing the scout reports locating an abandoned nursery was enough to send her out with us trailing as her guard and pack mules.
Spotting her poke back through the brush to give me a fist pump before disappearing just made me sigh. I hear the snick of her knife, making short work of dozens of trees. She comes to hand me a bundle of sticks, packed with moss and wrapped for transport. Scions, and a way forward.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Fletch says: Come ‘way with me, my beloved,
On through the garden gate, secret
and the high wall surrounding.
For balsam apple is in its season:
ripe to bursting and heavy with seed.
Come ‘way with me, my Darling,
to that secret place beyond the wall.
where hummingbird is in its flower
and butterfly on its wing.
Let’s steal away to dawning
To see the world again –
As land of endless wonder …
Where creator greets creation
and all descends from guiding hand.
For the busy, and the hurry
and the bustle of the day
find peace, and rest, and wonder
in that land beyond the gate.
The Song of Stephen
Chapter four, verse 16
Cameron says: With the funeral done and the will read, I walked out and didn’t look back at my family. Various fortunes had been distributed from grandma’s estate and the fact I was the last made some people think I was an afterthought.
It’s fine. Let people think that. I’m used to being underestimated. I was the one who refused college and followed my own path. Perhaps I’m broke compared to them but I have freedom. And in this case, my freedom was the land that was left to me.
I made my way there a day later. The town it’s a part of seems to have forgotten the existence of the home but everything is in place. Much of it is overgrown and I’ll be working on clearing things out for weeks. The house is still in decent condition and it looks like I’ll be warm for the upcoming winter.
And then I found the garden with the barn past the gate. Sealed off by a lock that I opened easily enough. I find the pallet full of bottles, the barrels and the instructions.
No one knew that grandpa was a famous distiller. And now I can carry on the trade.
You could still see the remnants of the formal gardens, if you looked close enough. Old Man Laughlan’s grandfather had made this place the envy of the smart set, bringing rare and beautiful plants from all over the world and making them grow here in the upper Midwest, where summers are short and winters bitter.
The greenhouses where he raised the most fragile of his prizes are now just rusting iron frames, their glass long shattered. Here and there you can still see some of the shelves on which the planters would’ve rested, the pipes that would’ve kept his beauties watered and the air at the proper humidity. But at this point, it’d be easier to just salvage everything for scrap, then build modern greenhouses with all the technology we use down at the nursery than try to restore Gilded-Age tech.
But what we’re really looking for is the strange tree he brought back from a high plateau somewhere in Southeast Asia, Loong or Leng or something like that. A tree with leaves that shone with eldritch light as evening gave way to darkness, and seemed to whisper with the sound of many voices when the wind rustled through them.
Supposedly he gave it its own tiny garden within a garden, bounded by walls and perhaps even raised or sunken — the stories have gotten confused in the retelling. As long as Old Man Laughlan was still around, nobody dared set foot in those gardens, because he’d get his rifle, and like as not he’d blow your head right off rather than give a warning shot. But now the old man’s finally gone on to his reward, with nary an heir in sight, it’s far too dangerous to let it escheat to the state. Bureaucrats have no notion of what they might be sending people to deal with.
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